Sunday Devotions: Putting Jesus First
Luke 9, Galatians 5
As June turns to July, Easter feels a long way away. But when better than early summer for the lectionary to remind us to join Jesus in setting our faces toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51), to recommit to follow his Way rather than be distracted by all the good but pressing demands of ordinary time?
After all, Luke still has ten chapters to go before Jesus enters Jerusalem, then another four more before the Crucifixion. Yet even as they take their first steps on the long road to his death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus is already preparing his disciples to keep their focus on him when he is gone. When a man promises to follow him “wherever you go,” Jesus warns his disciples not to expect even the routine comforts of hearth and home, since “foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (v 58). Two other would-be disciples are ready to follow Jesus… but only after first burying their father and saying farewell to their family (vv 59, 61). Jesus’ responses are those of one who has set his face toward the future, not the past: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God…. No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (vv 60, 62).
This is teaching by exaggeration; to follow Jesus is not to neglect a need as basic as shelter, or a love as deep as family. But his hyperbole does remind us to set our faces toward Jesus, whose gospel has implications for our other needs and affections. Were he to teach his American followers a similar lesson this week, Jesus may tell us to let our nation glorify itself, “but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Not because love of country is wrong, but because Christian discipleship is costly, and all-consuming.
If this week’s epistle is right that “those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24), then all that we are belongs to Jesus’ will, not our own. We don’t get to put our discipleship second while we get on with other parts of our lives — for nothing in our lives is either more important than the kingdom of God or outside of its reign.
_-_James_Tissot.jpg)
Commenting on Luke 9 for the Working Preacher series, Lutheran pastor-scholar Michael Rogness once wrote that “being a Christian and a disciple of Jesus gives us a whole new identity”; it “means living in ways we might not otherwise live.” Yet according to political scientist Ryan Burge, only 30% of non-evangelical Protestants say that their religious views are very important to their identity. Rogness recalled visiting an African-American congregation where person after person responded concretely to their pastor’s question, “What’s God been doing in your life lately?” — a question that “catches Lutherans by surprise, because we don’t usually think in such concrete ways” about how the Spirit is working through lives of discipleship.
Now, I’d have been one of the 77% of evangelical Protestants who Burge found agreeing that their religion was very important to their identity. For all its many problems, evangelicalism did teach me that seeking first God’s kingdom does not mean neglecting work, family, citizenship, or other important activities, but doing them in light of my commitment to follow Jesus — living in ways I might not otherwise live.
At the same time, we evangelicals have our own way of taking discipleship awry and focusing on something other than the mission of Jesus.
Precisely because we’re so conscious of trying to follow Jesus in all that we do, we tend to be something less than Christ-like around people like the denizens of the Samaritan village who “did not receive [Jesus] because his face was set toward Jerusalem” (v 53). At our judgmental worst, we respond to doubt and indifference with the righteous fury of James and John, who thought that following Jesus gave them the power of Elijah: “to command fire to come down from heaven and consume” those less faithful than themselves (v 54). But instead of treating discipleship as a pass/fail test and punishing those who weren’t ready or able to follow him on his Way, Jesus “turned and rebuked” James and John (v 55). He not only does not condemn the people of that Samaritan village, but in Luke’s next chapter Jesus makes a member of that nation the hero of his most famous parable (10:25-37).
As my Bethel colleague Jeannine Brown points out in another Working Preacher reflection on this passage, Jesus’ “mission focuses on proclaiming the good news and ‘the year of the Lord’s favor’ (4:18-18), with Luke leaving off the final reference from Isaiah 61:2 to proclaiming ‘the day of vengeance of our God.’ The present tense of Jesus’ ministry in Luke is about restoration, not vengeance. So, it is not surprising that Jesus rejects this idea of enacting judgment. Instead, the group moves on ‘to another village’ (potentially another Samaritan village).”
We don’t get to put our discipleship second while we get on with other parts of our life — but we also need to remember that every part of our life has become a field where the Spirit of God is cultivating the joy, peace, patience, generosity, and other fruit that will let us do like the good Samaritan and love our neighbor as ourself (Gal 5:14, 22-23).
Next week’s lectionary readings: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20; Galatians 6:1-16.